I was a late adopter of podcasts, but I came to like them a lot. They are much more relaxing than reading articles or watching videos after a busy day at work with strained eyes and visual cortex. In addition, they give me a linear stream to follow, which is also relaxing compared to hypertext with a lot of links and pointers to divert my attention. In fact, if I’m really tired, a podcast lulls me nicely to a nap, a trait I had only experienced with books before. And I can also combine podcasts with some manual work like washing the dishes. Finally, it’s a not-yet-completely-monopolized part of the media, so I can find some ad-free good content directly from experts working in the fields I’m interested in. I learned a lot from the podcasts in the last 4-5 years, and I would recommend them to any software architect.

So here some of the podcasts I listen to regularly, in a bliki fashion I intend to update the list over time.

Podcasts in English:

• Software Engineering Radio: This was started by Markus Völter, and now continued by the IEEE Software magazine, which is also a very recommendable publication. Recently it had a bit of falling out with senior show hosts leaving due to the introduction of advertisements (some of them controversial) in the podcast, which I myself didn’t like, either. But it still has a massively useful archive, and IMHO remains the prominent podcast for software engineering.
• HBR Ideacast: Being a software architect means you have to deal with the dark side (i.e. management and business ;-) ), so this podcast from Harvard Business Review might be useful. Frankly, after listening to HBR, I noticed how much the management practice is lagging behind the management science. So this is also recommended to people from management.
• On Computing: This is Grady Booch’s podcast which was formerly called On Architecture. He reads his column in the IEEE Software magazine. Touches on the philosophical aspects of software. Recommended if you do not want to miss the impact of software to our society, in particular the ethical concerns.
• Agile Weekly: This is a podcast about introducing agile methods into the organization. I find these people quite radical in terms of agility. Unfortunately, no recent podcasts are being published, but the archive is still useful.
• SEI Podcast: This is the official podcast of the Software Engineering Institute. If you’re interested in the challenges of large-scale software development (e.g. DoD projects) and how to address challenges of SW that is critical to politics, infrastructure and society in general, you might like it. It also works as a counterweight against the agility of Agile Weekly :-).
• The Changelog: Typically a single topic is discussed in lengthy (>1h) episodes. May be useful If you’re really interested in the topic. Developers can also find this interesting.
• IEEE Spectrum Podcasts: This was a podcast mainly led by Steven Cherry from the IEEE Spectrum magazine under the title Techwise Conversations. After he left, not much activity is going on, unfortunately. It was focusing on new and upcoming and maybe never upcoming technologies in development. So it’s good if you want to revisit the last few years of technology development in all branches of electrical engineering.

Podcasts in German:

• Heise Software Architektour: Markus Völter and Stefan Tilkov from the SE Radio are also involved here with the addition of Michael Stal from Siemens. Assumably thanks to Michael, the content aligns quite well with Siemens SSWA and SWA training programmes.
• innoQ: This is the podcast from the company of Stefan Tilkov, which I recently started listening to after he left the SE Radio. It’s good if you’re interested in learning about technologies in the enterprise software domain, e.g. Ruby on Rails, Single Page Applications.

I’d be interested in your podcast recommendations, as well.